


The Bucky Clause

by darth_stitch



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Comic, Golden Age (Comics), M/M, POV Outsider, Slash, The Bucky Clause
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-25
Updated: 2014-11-25
Packaged: 2018-02-26 23:23:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2670221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darth_stitch/pseuds/darth_stitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody in comics stays dead except for Bucky Barnes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bucky Clause

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at [The Blanket Fort](http://darthstitch.tumblr.com/post/98921284841/the-bucky-clause-nobody-in-comics-stays-dead)

_Nobody in comics stays dead except for Bucky Barnes.  
_

Bet you’ve heard of that before. 

Me - well, you wouldn’t know or even heard about me.  I’m old but I’m not like the Grand Old Man you’ve seen in all the superhero pictures.  I’m not an artist.  I write, a little bit - published a few stories in the pulps and in the horror comics under a couple of pen names before that hack Werthram came and ruined it all with the goddamn Code. 

Maybe I wrote a few little stories for  _The Shield_ \- silly, simple adventures that the little ones loved.  You might say that hero was like Captain America’s granddaddy though we didn’t bandy that around much, since I ultimately ended up working for the _other_ company on a steady basis.   

I was working with an artist who just sent in his panels and signed them Grant S.   I liked his line work - nice, clean, with just a touch of whimsy to them that made the hero just a little bit more human, a little more easy to relate to.  We’d mostly corresponded through mail; he’d said he was in poor health but a fella had to make a living, you know?  I understood that.  We kept it up until the very last set of art he sent. 

He was a professional.  He finished our last story before he told me he enlisted and probably wouldn’t be able to send anymore.  So that was that.  I didn’t hear from him again. 

Mostly I did the proofreading, made sure everyone was all nice and correct before we sent it to the printer’s.  We may be doing the funny papers, but god _damn_ we were making sure we were going to do them _right._

Like _the Bucky Clause._

See, we knew back then that Cap and the Howling Commandos were _real_ people.  I was one of those who thought it was a _stupid_ idea to make Bucky Barnes Cap’s _teenage_ sidekick.  They just really wanted to have an answer to Batman’s Robin and I thought that was a load of hogwash.  Bucky Barnes was actually _older_ than Cap by a year, when I did the research.  Not that I could turn up a lot of information at the time.  Everything was _classified_ and I wasn’t about to be caught up in some witch hunt as a Nazi spy.  

So we just had the bare bones for facts and after that, we were free to make up everything else.  Whatever kept the hopes up for the people at home, maybe give the fellas at the front a few laughs. 

It helped that the real Captain America - _Steve Rogers -_ ended up being more than just the USO’s glorified chorus girl.  400 POWs out of Azzano, rescued on a suicide mission - _everyone_ knew that story.  In fact, it was a lot better than punching ol’ Adolf in the face 200 times. 

I was tasked with putting it in the comics too - had to make up the details, of course, but everyone loved it.  Sold out copies that very first day and we had to print out more.  War Department snapped ‘em up and it helped them raise even more sales for war bonds.  It was their best publicity tool, at least until we had our other boys raise the flag at Iwo Jima. 

And then, you know that Barnes died and we all thought Cap died too.  For a while, there was talk in keeping up the Captain America comics but it was hard selling them when everyone knew he’d gone down in that plane in the Arctic.  So the story was written, a respectful tribute to two fallen heroes.  Again, we had to make up the details as we went along, but the story was told.  And we thought that was that. 

And at first, the _Clause_ was “ _Nobody in comics stays dead except for Cap and Bucky Barnes.”_

But then there was that whole deal with Russia and McCarthy started spooking folks by making them look for boogeyman Commies under every bed.  That fella Burnside was eager and willing to take up the shield as Cap in the real world and for a short time, we had a Captain America again, though God only knew whether it was worth the trouble it ultimately caused. 

So of course, while Burnside was doing his real world heroics and sure, we knew about how he’d battled that new “Red Skull” and beat him, saving a lot of lives in the process - we started making up new Captain America adventures in the comics again. 

I couldn’t say it then; because I had a wife and kids to feed and I didn’t need to be put on some god damn Commie Blacklist.  They broke the Clause to bring back Cap and I hated it. 

Sure, it might have been easier to swallow if we’d run with the truth - _Captain America_ could have been a title passed on to some other “worthy” fellow, someone else who could take up the name and the shield and carry on the legacy.  Instead, this cockamamie story of finding him alive in the ice was cooked up and _William Burnside_ wouldn’t exist at all.  There was only ever Steve Rogers.  

At least they didn’t do the same thing to Bucky Barnes, poor guy.  “Captain” Burnside’s “Bucky” took on the “name” but didn’t claim to be the lost Howling Commando. 

I wasn’t proud of what we did then.  Maybe we were just making funny papers and maybe most people with an ounce of common sense in their heads knew they weren’t real.  But I don’t think it helped to tell those kinds of stories.  I know good men and women who lost what life they had due to all that balderdash about Communists.  And maybe we _did_ catch a few real rotten apples. 

I don’t know whether the cost against someone else’s _innocent_ life - someone who could have easily been just like _me_ \- was worth it. 

Well, you know what happened there.  Burnside was never Steve Rogers, no matter what he did to change his face and his name and whatever cocktail of drugs or magic hoodoo potions he must’ve taken to make him like our first _real_ Super Soldier.  And at this point, we’d already known some of the real story behind Steve Rogers, enough to add it to the whole “Captain America reborn” storyline. 

Thank God Rogers wasn’t around to see Burnside lose it completely.  I was there, just another bystander, when it did happen.   Everyone still remembers that moment when "Captain America" started raving about "Communists infiltrating the government" that fateful day at Times Square.  I was just unlucky to have been there, getting back to the office after a meeting with another artist.  Might have gotten hurt myself if my coworker Don hadn’t screamed at me to stay the hell down and out of the way. 

They’d tell us later that Burnside was “shot down” by an “unknown assailant” after this manhunt that eventually ended at the Hoover Dam, but we all figured it must have been the G-men who did it or maybe someone in the SSR.  We all kept our traps shut anyway.  People seemed to agree that it was something best forgotten, though I felt sore about the unfairness of it all for a very long time. 

In the comics, "Cap" was sent to some "alternate universe" while we tried to figure out where we’d go from there.  And of course, the Bucky Clause - because that’s what we were calling it now - stayed intact.  Bucky would stay dead - no point in resurrecting _this_ old ghost.  We owed that man this much. 

Of course, I laughed myself sick when we _did_ find Captain America - _Steve Rogers_ himself, alive in the ice in the real world.  Fiction writing Real Life - I couldn’t have come up with a better story myself.  Then the whole mess with the aliens in New York happened and now, we’re living in a world with _real_ superheroes again.

Better than the funny papers.

I wasn’t laughing when they’d told us the news about what happened to the real Bucky Barnes, the man who was never Cap’s _teenage_ _sidekick_ , the torture, the brainwashing, the people HYDRA made him kill.  I wasn’t laughing when they tried to make us believe that Cap was blind and a fool for loving him - damn near threw my shoe at the screen when they’d made him admit to that. None of their goddamn business, it was.

Maybe a man loving another man wasn’t the done thing in my day but I never held it against a fellow and I read the Good Book too, without the fire and brimstone preachers like to add in.  There are far worse things in the world than simply _loving._

I was with my great-granddaughter on the day we watched it all on CNN.  She’s the one carrying on the family legacy - bright, smart girl with a knack for telling stories both in words and in pictures.  She’ll go farther than her old Grandpappy, who’d just been content to put food on the table, who’d let all his dreams go. 

One day, I got a package in the mail.

I opened it and there’s a few bits of artwork there that I recognized, even after all these years.  My old friend Grant S. and God almighty, there were those nice, crisp lines, that bit of familiar whimsy, though this time he was drawing _Captain America_ instead of _The Shield._

The only difference was that Grant S. drew Bucky the way he should’ve been portrayed to begin with - a young man in his prime, not a young boy, blue peacoat and sniper rifle on the shoulder, with just a bit of pout to him.   

And there was a letter with them and a few more written things besides but I’ll not forget how that letter ended.

_I’ve never forgotten your kindness, letting me have a shot at doing a story about the Shield and I suppose it’s a bit ironic, considering what would happen to me later._

_I trust you to tell our story.  I trust that you’ll get it right._

_Your friend,_

_Steven Grant Rogers_

I’m old, but my mind’s not gone yet and with all that’s happening, I certainly don’t want to get near a grave soon.  I can still use a pen and a paper and that computer my great-granddaughter gave me.  So I’m back and I’ll be working with her and I think I got myself room for one more dream.  And we’re going to break that Bucky Clause and I’ll do it with a smile on my face and a song in my heart this time. 

_Captain America:  the Winter Soldier_

I’ve got a story to tell.

_\- end -_

**Author's Note:**

> So this is what happens when I spend the majority of my late teens/early adulthood reading classic Wizard and boning up on comics history.  I decided to playfully tapdance a bit on what comics might have been in the MCU.  Heh. 


End file.
